


Hermione, 1992 (Part 1)

by JessaLRynn



Series: Glimpses [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Feels, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Fear, Gen, Introspection, The Golden Trio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:25:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7480728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The off-camera moments between an escape and a rescue.  About a trio...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hermione, 1992 (Part 1)

Hermione is gasping desperately for air, listening with relief to the melancholy strains of an enchanted harp behind the door. It was conjured only moments before and has been playing an incessant, mournful dirge ever since, a water-pure lament in the crystalline registers of a sorrow too deep for tears. Ron is muttering at her side, dazed and swaying, almost in perfect time to the music. She is holding him up with a stern grip on his arm, just as he is supporting her with the very last of his strength. She knows somehow, with a knowledge that transcends truth, that this, figuratively at least, is where they will stand, time and time again, waiting out the very last of it, for the rest of their lives. "Til death do us part," she murmurs. Ron looks at her sharply, and nods in understanding, and it is only then that she realizes she has spoken her thoughts aloud.

His blue eyes meander out of focus again, and he lists sharply, but she shakes him and he summons another modicum of strength from that seemingly bottomless well that is his very soul. She will never have to falter, at least, even though she may fear and may stumble, for this boy at her side is her Rock, and always will be, and there is nothing that can happen to two people that will ever change the fact.

They have succeeded in their mission, and have nothing else left to them but hope, and waiting. Hermione knows they had better get very good at waiting because if they are going to be friends with Harry Potter (another fact that may as well be cardinal law), this is where they will always be at the end of the adventure, waiting in desperate fear, in exhaustion that physically bruises, for word on what has become of Harry. He is the central fact of their lives, and will be for years to come, even if it all burns down tonight, or some night many years from now, and they have nothing left to hold onto but each other and the elegiac tones of a wizard's requiem.

There is hope in the music, too; it is not a requiem yet. There's a descant underlying the melody, a song that Hermione's musical ear will remember all her life as "Harry's Theme". It sounds like phoenix song, like her father's voice on a stormy night, like Ron laughing, like Hagrid's grin, like Dumbledore's aimless humming, like McGonagall's secret smile, like _Harry_. He is a great wizard, she knows this, not anymore because she has read all about him, but now because she has read _him_. She has studied him and Ron both, and as they grow together she will study them every day of their lives, and she will learn them as well as any book, because they are more precious to her than _any_ book.

She knows that she will never understand him. Ron, she understands, in her way. Ron is a mere mortal, like herself. A great mortal, to be sure, but human, with frailties and weaknesses, and normal descents into childishness. Not Harry, though. Everything he does, even when he doesn't realize it - _especially_ when he doesn't realize it - is larger than life. He is braver than all the brave people in the world, walking willingly into the unknown on the off chance that he is the only one who can stop the nightmares. He is wiser than wise men, knowing without any doubt the difference between right and wrong and understanding what he has to do to defend the right. Even now, when he is so very young, he is powerful beyond the mere meaning of the word. If he has to be the lone candle in the darkness, then by whatever gods there might be that defend young wizards too tough to know when to quit, he is going to stand there and be that light, with the very last breath in him, though it cost him every single pitiful thing he might have. Even if he is the only flame on a moonless night with cloud cover that survives the world, there will still be warmth in his small corner.

She tried to tell him that, down there in the darkness, where the unnatural fire from a Dark Wizard's trap held them, however briefly, at bay. He trusted her strength, trusted her with his life, because that was the right thing to do, just as he had trusted Ron with all their lives in the earlier trap that was Ron's particular forte. He gave her orders, a leader as born to it as he is a Seeker born to the broomstick. She followed them at the last, a loyal soldier in his tiny army, though she is still a child herself, and taking orders from another child ought to seem wrong. But she is his lieutenant, and Ron his general, and that is what they will do forever, be Harry's right and left hands until he doesn't need them anymore and they will still have each other.

They are alone now, and they have no idea what is happening below, what Harry has found to further stop him, if he has caught Snape, if he has found the Stone. They are almost - almost - too tired to care. But they do care, or they wouldn't be standing here.

Dumbledore had found them, as they charged madly across the Entrance Hall, heading for the owlry without any other thought in their heads, though Ron was scarcely conscious and she herself had nearly lost her arm as they shot out past the slumbering monster in the next room. As he barreled toward them with a white blur hovering at one shoulder, a red and gold blur at the other, it was hard to tell whether he nearly bowled them over, or whether they nearly flattened him. Hermione was sobbing in relief as she saw him, but all he said was "Harry's gone after him, hasn't he?" and tore off to the third floor corridor. She looked at Ron, and he looked at her, and they watched the most powerful wizard of their time race up the stairs as if he had dropped nearly a hundred and twenty-five years on his way up to the castle. The encouraging cry of Hedwig lingered behind him as she flew away, the phoenix's song had a strangely somnolent effect as it echoed down the castle toward them.

"So that's good then," Ron had said.

"Hospital wing, I think," Hermione had replied, staring at her bloody shoe with some surprise.

"No chance," Ron had snapped firmly, obviously prepared to fight her to the death on that point. It was strangely gratifying that he would take the time to convince her rather than go without her. She had nodded. So they had poured whatever they had left in them into one last trip up the stairs and that had gotten them where they are now. There are new locks on the doors, funny silver ones. Hermione had tried when they first got here, everything she could think of to get through them. There had been something funny about the Alohomora charm earlier, but these are even odder, and there is no getting around them.

She is counting her heartbeats more than the minutes, and listening to the measured strains of the magic harp. Some how, she knows that it is Dumbledore's own emotion controlling it, and waits with nervous anxiety for the descant to fade and the requiem to turn the chords to weeping. She is unaware of anything else, so unaware that Ron has been wiping tears from her face with a pitiful handkerchief for several minutes before she even notices. She smiles weakly at him. "You have dirt on your nose, by the way," she whispers. "Did you know?"

Humorously, she imagines this, one of the first thing she ever said to him, will someday in the distant future be the last thing as well. He is nodding wisely at her, as if she had pronounced holy writ, and she knows he's definitely got a concussion. "Can you hear it?" he asks. "It's weird to know what Dumbledore is thinking."

"True," she replies, and then her heart stops. The music has skipped a single beat, and the chords have turned to dust, to fury and sorrow, to blackest despair, and a loss that bleeds unseen.

She grabs Ron's hand in a desperate hold, a sob escaping as her heart shatters and scatters. She can tell from Ron's face, just before she crumbles into his shoulder, that he knows, truly and terribly, what this new sound must mean, and his heart is breaking, too. He holds her tightly, in a way that he has never done, and she hears him speaking. She curtails her sobs, so she can hear the bitter cursing, just in case she needs to join in.

Instead, what she hears sets her on fire. "Don't give up. Even now, we can't give up. We have to believe, even if nobody else can, we have to, even if Dumbledore can't, we have to believe. We can't give up." He is repeating himself like a litany, like a prayer, a spell of the most ancient kind, the whispers of eldritch magic chanted in the old groves and high places. She nods and feels it - he believes it with a ferocity so intense that it is almost tangible.

And he is right. The chords modulate again, starkly, breathlessly, and again there is silence. Then, the harp explodes into joyous triumph, the sound of the morning coming up the day magic was born. They look at each other and grin, briefly, then collapse, spent, against the door.


End file.
